The following relates generally to wireless communication, and more specifically to selection of nodes and routing for delay-tolerant messages.
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, (e.g., a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system). A wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, which may be referred to herein as user equipment (UE). A base station may communicate with UEs on downlink channels (e.g., for transmissions from a base station to a UE) and uplink channels (e.g., for transmissions from a UE to a base station).
Other wireless devices may also be deployed and may have limited available power and also a limited means to directly connect to a wireless network (e.g., due to the costs associated with equipping such devices with the hardware and subscription costs associated with cellular communications). These other wireless devices may include wearable devices, sensor nodes, internet-of-things (IoT) devices, etc. Despite their limited available power or communication means, these other devices may nevertheless collect data that would ideally be transmitted to a network. The collected data may generally be limited in quantity and may often be delay-tolerant. In one scenario, these low-power and other devices may be equipped with wireless local area network (WLAN) (e.g., Wi-Fi) hardware. However, the devices may suffer from WLAN connectivity concerns due to limited WLAN coverage, changing WLAN configurations and settings, and so on. Therefore, other options for conveying the delay-tolerant data to a network are desirable.